U.S. Pat. No. 6,246,896 discloses a MRI guided ablation system comprising a tracking coil which serves dual purposes. At first it provides NMR tracking data for the MRI system which is used to help a physician to guide the ablation device into a proper treatment position within the patient, and thereafter it is used by the ablation system to deliver the heat generating energy to the target tissue. In order to achieve this, a switch operated by the MRI system either couples the tracking coil to a receiver in the MRI system when it performs a position measurement by a NMR pulse sequence, or couples it to an ablation control for performing ablation of tissue. As an alternative, the ablation control could be inductively coupled to the tracking coil.